A foundation that was formed to honor Beau Biden, the deceased son of the president, is coming under scrutiny for raking in millions of dollars in donations but only spending thousands on its mission. The Beau Biden Foundation for the Protection of Children was founded less than a month after Beau died in 2015. Its mission is to prevent child abuse by educating adults and children.

Its 2020 tax filing shows that while the Beau Biden Foundation received $3.9M in donations, it only spent $544,961 on its mission. It spent only 58% of its budget on its mission, according to CharityWatch, a watchdog group. The total donations includes $1.8M from The Biden Foundation. The foundation also received $225,000 from one of Joe Biden’s top political donors. Almost $1M went to paying the six-figure salaries of executives of the foundation.

It’s a red flag for any charity that spends more on its executives than on the services it provides. Donors are supposed to trust that their contributions go to the mission of a charity, in this case protecting children from child abuse, and not to lining the pockets of its executive leadership.

The charity spent a total of $932,865 that year, with a large chunk of it going to the six-figure salaries of Biden cronies who held executive jobs at the non-profit.

Patricia Dailey Lewis, who served as Delaware deputy attorney general under late AG Beau Biden, runs the non-profit and was paid $150,660 in 2020, including a $3,500 bonus.

Joshua Alcorn, a longtime Democratic operative and consultant on both Beau Biden’s and Joe Biden’s political campaigns, served as COO and was paid $131,437. He has since stepped down.

Laurie Styron, executive director of CharityWatch, says that top-rated nonprofits spend at least 75% of their budgets on programs. The Beau Biden Foundation is spending 58% toward its mission. “A 58 percent program ratio does not reflect a high level of financial efficiency,” she said.

The board has been heavy with Biden family members. Hunter was a board member in 2020, during the time that the New York Post broke the laptop story. A sticker from the foundation was on the laptop. Ashley Biden, Joe and Jill’s daughter, and Hallie Biden, Beau’s widow, were also on the board in 2020. The foundation reeks of another venture for Biden, Inc. Currently, Hallie is the only one still on the board. It is unclear if any of the Bidens received salaries. However, with Hunter Biden’s history of trading on his father’s position in government and the family name, it is reasonable for observers to be skeptical that the family is not enriching itself through a non-profit. (The Big Guy always gets 10%.)

Former FBI director Louis Freeh was also on the board in 2020.

There seems to be a transparency problem. The foundation wouldn’t provide a copy of its 2020 tax filing to the New York Post but referred it to the Guidestar website. On Friday, the document had suddenly disappeared.

The group said that following Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration, it wouldn’t take money from lobbyists or foreign donors and would release names of its major contributors on its website in a bid to increase transparency.

But the organization refused to provide a copy of its 2020 tax filing to The Post in early March. It later said the document was available on the Guidestar website.

The document posted to the site earlier this week included a list of top donors, but by Friday that list was missing from the filing.

Hmm. The list of donors includes political supporters of Joe Biden. One donor, Joe Kiani, has benefitted from millions of dollars in federal contracts and he was named to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology by Biden. That is a prestigious position. Theirs is a longtime friendship.

Biden in September of last year placed close confidant Joe Kiani, the founder and CEO of the medical technology company Masimo Corporation, on the influential President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Kiani’s company, which manufactures various medical devices, has received almost $3 million in federal government contracts since Biden took office in 2021. Its contracts include funding from the Department of Defense and Department of Health and Human Services.

The council, according to its website, “advises the president on matters involving science, technology, education, and innovation policy” and “provides the president with scientific and technical information that is needed to inform public policy.”

The new post and contracts were awarded just a few years after Kiani emerged as one of Biden’s biggest benefactors. In 2017, the Masimo Foundation donated at least $1 million to the Biden Foundation, on top of up to $500,000 from Kiani and his wife, according to donations that were disclosed by the foundation. During the 2020 campaign, Kiani bundled more than $1 million for Biden and hosted in-person and virtual fundraisers for him. Kiani also gave $750,000 to the pro-Biden super PAC Unite the Country, and his foundation gave another $1 million for Biden’s inaugural committee.

The Biden-Kiani relationship dates back years, and the president has not attempted to shield the friendship. At a 2018 conference sponsored by an organization Kiani funds, Biden referred to the businessman as “one of my closest friends.” In 2015, then-vice president Biden delivered the keynote address at Kiani’s Patient Safety, Science, and Technology Summit.

That sounds pretty swampy. It does nothing to improve the Biden family’s reputation for graft and influence-buying. One member of the House Oversight Committee says he will look into potential “cronyism”.

“Cronyism in any form is wrong,” said Rep. Ralph Norman (R., S.C.), who serves on the House Oversight Committee. “For someone who has spent almost 40 years in Washington, you’d think President Biden of all people would know that.

“Yet here we are, another campaign donor receiving a post in the administration, this time on the prestigious President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. It’s important to get to the bottom of this, and I’m happy to help lead that charge.”

What happened to Biden’s claim that his administration would be the most transparent and ethical in history?

Employees at Masimo Corporation donated thousands to Biden’s American Possibilities PAC, making the company one of the largest backers of the super PAC.

Other members of the Biden family have fostered relationships with Kiani as well. Biden’s son-in-law, Howard Krein, is the chief medical officer of Startup Health, a company that was launched with significant investment from Kiani’s Masimo Corporation, which was part of a nearly $20 million funding round in 2018. During Biden’s presidential campaign, Krein served as an informal adviser to his campaign while working at the Masimo-invested Startup Health, which was simultaneously running “a special initiative to invest in health care startups that offer solutions to the pandemic,” according to Politico. Biden’s son Hunter and brother Frank have both leveraged their ties to the president as part of their business pitches.

Since Kiani joined the Biden administration, his foundation, the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation, and Competition in Healthcare, has funded coverage in USA Today about health and patient safety. Among the content paid for by Kiani’s foundation is a recent story about the administration’s at-home COVID test kit roll out. USA Today says the Masimo Foundation has no editorial input on news coverage. Its most recent public tax forms show over $350,000 of donations to USA Today to expand the outlet’s “capacity to produce unique, groundbreaking journalism aimed at improving patient safety and outcomes.”

It sure sounds like this foundation is set up to reward donors and friends. Frankly, it sounds like a smaller version of the Clinton Foundation. Perhaps the Biden family saw how extremely wealthy the Clintons became through their foundation and are following that template.

The Beau Biden Foundation’s CEO is Patricia Dailey Lewis. She served as a deputy Attorney General in Delaware under Beau Biden. Her salary in 2020 was $150,660, which included a $3,500 bonus. COO Joshua Alcorn was paid $131,437 in 2020. He has since stepped down. Those are generous salaries for a small family foundation.